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Velcroman1 writes "Lockheed Martin on Tuesday unveiled the first Orion spacecraft, a part of what NASA had planned as the sprawlingly ambitious Constellation project that would offer a replacement for the space shuttle — and a means to ferry humans into outer space and back to the moon. Orion and the companion Ares heavy-lift rocket were part of Constellation, a program cancelled under President Barack Obama's 2011 budget proposal."

Not more real, but certainly more exciting. The fact that a 50 year old concept is more exciting than a new space vehicle says a lot about the failures of the space program. If funding had continued just a few years longer we might have seen simple thermal nuclear rockets like NERVA fly. Even the simplest nuclear rockets would have been almost an order of magnitude more effective than chemical rockets, and the preliminary tests were 100% successful. The fact that no one has even broached the subject since says a lot about the public's fears of anything nuclear.

Not more real, but certainly more exciting. The fact that a 50 year old concept is more exciting than a new space vehicle says a lot about the failures of the space program.

I'm not sure what you mean by "failures"? Maybe it didn't meet your expectations but definitely not failures.
We have what we due to politics and limitations of reality not "Failures" of concepts or of what NASA has accomplished.

Chemical rockets are a dead end. They will never be able to put large amounts of supplies into orbit and will never be fast enough of interplanetary distances to be practical as anything more than an interesting diversion. The failure I am referring to is the failure to recognize this and invest money, time, and effort into alternatives. NASA successfully test fired a nuclear powered rocket that as a drop in replacement for on the Saturn V would have improved it's payload by 4x, using technology from the '60s. And then the funding dried up for anything experimental or paradigm shifting and we've been stuck on chemical rockets which have no hope of actually accomplishing any of the long term goals of the manned space program.

Perhaps it isn't a failure of the agency, they do, after all, get their funding and many of their mission statements from congress. But I have never heard about a high ranking NASA spokesman going to congress and saying "We need money for advanced, non-chemical launch technologies".

While I agree with you, imagine if one nuclear powered rocket failed? If there had been nuclear derived shuttle and either Columbia or Challenger accident occurred? We are after all talking a minimum of 5GW reactors. It would have set back the space program years if not canceled it out right. Out of either type, chemical or nuclear chemical is still safer, thats why we still have them.

I do see more hope for a Scram-Jet type launcher, or electromagnetic launcher. Both are much better than either chemical or nuclear. Once we are in the vacuum of space there is plasma and engines much like VASIMER, or even nuclear thermal.

Scram-Jet / etc. "spaceplanes", when you have serious effort at costs estimation (HOTOL, for example), turn out not really better than "dumb rocket" using comparably advanced materials science (which for the "spaceplane" is required to even make it barely possible)

Electromagnetic launcher / etc. - first, remember how such proposals talk about building a megastructure (often... dynamically suspended; do you see many normal (puny) buildings like that?). Secondly, not assuming gargantuan fantasies, the proj

ARES was killed because it was too expensive. It was supposed to be built using off the shelf shuttle parts, but wound up being a completely new rocket. It was so heavy that they would have needed to get new crawler transporters, rebuild the launch platforms and the crawler pathways leading to them. The rocket could barely fit inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The chosen engines had nozzles that would have melted in the predicted thermal environment. It's costs were spiralling out of control. That

Chemical rockets are a dead end. They will never be able to put large amounts of supplies into orbit and will never be fast enough of interplanetary distances to be practical as anything more than an interesting diversion.

Chemical rockets already have proven you wrong here. My view is that you have the two technologies switched around. It'll be a long time, if ever, that nuclear propulsion is permitted to lift payload out of Earth's gravity well. I think there will be many decades of successful in-space operation of nuclear propulsion before it'll be allowed in that critical role. By the time, nuclear propulsion is allowed, it might not even be necessary (with, for example, launch structures like space tethers or launch loop

I love the fact that no one seems to remember that the whole "test ban treaty" against nukes in space is what made the funding dry up, in turn killing this project. I'm sure if we could do it today there would be money put to it. It doesn't matter if you have all the money in the world, you can't do the impossible.

The treaty ban on nuclear explosives in space made Orion impossible. However, there is no issue with nuclear thermal rockets like NERVA.

Project Orion will never be revived. However, use of nuclear power may still live in VASIMR technology. The prototype is supposed to go up this year but we'll see. If it works as planned it's a game changer for in-space travel. Unlike most revolutionary technology companies Ad Astra is actually helmed by an ex-astronaut with an actual Ph.D. VASIMR technology comes from Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz's MIT thesis.

It is a huge year for SpaceX, Ad Astra, and spaceflight in general this year.

The fact is, that while nuke itself is lightweight, the current means of generating high amounts of power/energy from it, is not. All of the large systems are thermal and require the ability to dump waste heat. In space, you have no easy way to dump, so it is radiated outwards. That requires a LONG HEAVY BOOM. With that weight, VASIMR is just not possible. Instead, it will be NERVA that will win the day. Interestingly, with a NERVA engine, you can still add a small generator to it and use that to power the

Let me paint a possible future scenario for you.1) There is a limited nuclear exchange between two countries, let's say Pakistan and India as a modern day example.2) While hundreds of thousands/Millions die in the attacks radiation casualties outside of the attack are limited to a few thousand.3) Some bright spark decides casualties could have been fewer if they had not just airspace control, but also had assets in orbit.4) After the public accept that there could be limited nuclear exchange, nuclear weapon

What for? The rebels in the middle east just want to oust their own crappy leaders, they're not worried much about other countries, and certainly don't want to destroy their own cities. The rebels in Egypt and Tunisia did just fine, ousting their crappy leaders without much death and damage at all. The rebels in Libya are having a somewhat harder time unfortunately, but they're actually welcoming a limited amount of foreign intervention to keep Gaddafi's forces from slaughtering them.

Most paints applied to spacecraft are chosen due to their thermal properties. Some paints will give higher reflective indexes, while others will absorb more energy, and still others are designed to let a certain amount of energy through the paint and into whatever surface it is covering. I don't know which paint, specifically, has the "baby puke green" color that you are referring to, but I would wager that the entire body of this spacecraft was coated in that paint specifically to control the thermal pathways through the spacecraft body.

It's worth noting that one of the most difficult and most important aspects of spacecraft design involve the energy management within the spacecraft. Spacecraft are subject to high levels of radiation, high and low temperature extremes, and house multiple boxes of electronics that cannot be cooled via typical convective methods as they are on the ground. Thus, to keep a spacecraft operating effectively, a full analysis must be done to take into account all energy (thermal or otherwise) sources in a spacecraft and redirect energy to appropriately sized energy sinks (radiators, heat-pies, etc.). This is one aspect of spacecraft design that many folks fail to take into account when discussing how simple it would be to build a spacecraft that does [insert theoretical task here].

Thus, to keep a spacecraft operating effectively, a full analysis must be done to take into account all energy (thermal or otherwise) sources in a spacecraft and redirect energy to appropriately sized energy sinks (radiators, heat-pies, etc.).

Offtopic, by why are the majority of aerospace projects painted in that hideous baby puke green?

I know there must be technical reason behind it, what is it?

Note that the picture shows the interior structure of the capsule, not the final external panels. I assume that it's probably a yellow-green zinc chromate coating that is commonly used to prevent corrosion on aluminum parts on aircraft and spacecraft.

Offtopic, by why are the majority of aerospace projects painted in that hideous baby puke green?

I know there must be technical reason behind it, what is it?

Note that the picture shows the interior structure of the capsule, not the final external panels. I assume that it's probably a yellow-green zinc chromate coating that is commonly used to prevent corrosion on aluminum parts on aircraft and spacecraft.

Why bother coating the aluminum? Aluminum oxide does a pretty good job of preventing corrosion.

The bare metal scheme requires constant polishing. However, it's also in an easily-visible location without holes or corners to trap moisture like the inside of a structure would have. It's workable on the outside of an aircraft, but really not practical for the inside.

Look, I've built an airplane and work on airplanes for a living. I think I know what I'm talking about.

How much of a problem is the toxicity and carcinogenic properties really, though? As long as the material is handled carefully in a safe manner, with appropriate protective clothing and such, how much of a problem is it?

My theory is that paints have to be made with equal quantities of each color. After consumers buy up the attractive colors, the ugly ones have to go somewhere. Might as well paint schools and government buildings with them. That must be why some military buildings I've seen are painted inside with the same awful yellow as my 3rd grade classroom.

Yet most sane people seem to hate those bland and "calming" colors intensely. Just from asking a few friends I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely not alone in almost getting feelings of nausea when I'm forced to be in hospitals or other buildings painted in those "calming" color schemes...

Although in practice I suspect it has more to do with being "non-offensive" to a the point where the non-offensiveness becomes offensive. It's not just the colors, ever look at the paintings on the walls of a

Off topic, but the human eye has roughly twice as many green receptors as red or blue. The CCD in your digital camera is also laid out that way to get the correct vibrance. With a standard 1:1:1 ratio images would seem dull.

The Shuttle program was great for what it was and I am sad to see it go. However, I welcome the idea of an Apollo like program to inspire, distract, and encourage pushing the envelope again. I think the world needs some vision beyond what is terrestrial these days.

I have thought long and hard about that. It also goes along the line of why not utilize the previous designs for the shuttle and improve on it rather than making a whole new launch system? But, until we have some kind of vastly improved propulsion systems, the design focus was on a series of upgrades on the proven. Just my two cents anyway...

In terms of actual track record - the Shuttle failed to deliver on many of its promises. Despite being a reusable vehicle, I believe it proved to be actually more expensive to operate than one-time-use launch vehicles. Part of that was due to conflicting requirements from multiple entities - the military wanted certain capabilities that greatly increased cost.

Meanwhile, the one-time use + capsule approach worked VERY well while it was in use, and has continued to work very well for Russia.

Yeah, but not a warmed over, super-sized Apollo capsule. Is that it for innovation out of NASA? Modernized 40 year old capsules?

You know, my brand new tower looks exactly the same as my 386 tower from 1993. Is that innovation? Modernized 18 year old computers?

(If you look real close the power supply type has changed, and I no longer have 3.5 or 5.25 floppys, in its place I have a front panel USB hub, and no turbo button / turbo LEDs, but this all requires close examination)

Capsules are an extremely capable form factor when talking about spacecraft. When something is orbiting a gravity well in a vacuum or near vacuum, the geometry of that thing has some very powerful effects on the design of the system in general. Capsule are nice in that they are symmetric about one axis. This makes controlling and pointing them very easy. If you take a geometry like that of the space shuttle, the control problems become much more difficult. Those large wings and that vertical stabilizer act as moment arms about your roll axis. Any forces that act upon those moment arms turn into large, asymmetrical torques (these forces can be due to atmospheric drag, radiation gradients, thermal gradients, micro-meteor impacts, etc.). Damping out the increase in angular momentum due to torques applied to such large moment arms requires more powerful, more massive, more power-hungry momentum exchange devices (like reaction wheels, CMG's whatever). Thus, such a clunky geometric design puts some heavy restrictions on your system design space.

Now, if you take a form factor like the capsule, you find that you don't have those giant moment arms (save for the solar arrays which, if designed properly, should go a long way in canceling out each other's torques). What's more, you have a nice aerodynamic shape that can reenter atmospheres much more elegantly than, say a brick with wings bolted on. All in all, the capsule is a beautifully elegant design that solves many of the difficult space-environment design problems through passive geometry, rather than through more active systems like large control mechanisms or expensive ceramic tiles.

Just because a design is 40 years old doesn't mean it's poor. The car is the same form factor that it was back when it was design in the early 1900's, but that's because there is a lot to be said for a 4-wheel base vehicle. That doesn't mean all cars are the same as the Model T though.

Finally, you should probably realize that The Orion was built and designed by Lockheed-Martin, not NASA.

What's wrong with capsules? They're the best, most reliable, and most efficient solution to the problem of transporting humans to space and returning them to Earth, and they're going to remain that way until the Space Elevator is built and rockets are used.

"The spacecraft is an incredibly robust, technically advanced vehicle capable of safely transporting humans to asteroids, Lagrange Points and other deep space destinations that will put us on an affordable and sustainable path to Mars.”

Many of Orion's components can be re-used in subsequent flights, including some electronic systems, Bray said. The spaceship itself won't be reused because of the tremendous forces it endures on liftoff and re-entry, he said.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter and Sen. Michael Bennet, Colorado Democrats who pressed Obama to salvage the Orion project, said they were confident the spacecraft will fly, but neither discussed specifics in brief remarks at the dedication ceremony for the test building.

I think there's a type somewhere... seems more like the Onion Moon Craft.

There are quite a few private companies that are currently developing space capsules that the government isn't paying for. The first one that comes to my mind is Interorbital Systems. Much of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was developed with private funds. Boeing is currently developing a commercial capsule for launch cargo, and, possibly, crew. Orbital sciences is developing an unmanned capsule. There are also a handful of other, smaller contenders, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. Blue Origin has

All of these are valid, but each of these requires something a little different. Instead of a clear voice [We shall put a man on the moon in 10 years] we have these Â½ measures for the past 20 years. And this leaves us with what? No replacement for the Space Shuttle?

Clear voices and tunnel "vision" are great for showing off human ingenuity (and specifically American ingenuity in the Cold War), but aren't necessarily that great for making progress. Not to knock Apollo, but seriously, what a clear voice of "We shall do [insert phenomenal but specific achievement" gets us is 10-20 years of focus on a specific task that lets us touch the place we were talking about, plant a flag, then leave with a couple samples. Great, but not what I call visionary. It was a vision, ba

To get funding for this, you need to fire the imagination of the people. To do that you need to put people into space. And then, when you get them into space, for Pete's sake, DO NOT show them playing in zero G. Show them working. This is probably the biggest mistake NASA ever made.

Personally, my imagination was fired much more by Voyager, Hubble, the Mars Rovers, and Cassini, than it ever was by the Shuttles or ISS. ISS is a worthy endeavor, I'm just saying, when I think of humans in space doing science I think that's really cool, but when I think of all these instruments studying other planets, other galaxies, expanding human knowledge of our universe, it brings tears to my eyes.

They're going ahead because Congress hasn't passed a budget for 2011 yet, so under CR, they keep getting the funding profile they had last year. The government, i.e., you and me, are still paying for it. And when we stop, they'll stop.

I'd bet that part of it is the Us FY2011 budget debacle. Congress never passed a new budget for 2011. They just repassed a part of the old 2010. The 2010 budget had money to finish Orion. So basically they dropped another wad of money on LockMart marked "do it again". OK, not quite that easy really, but the extra cash probably came in handy on some of the finishing touches.

My understanding is that the Obama administration's re-direction came during the middle of a fiscal year. The work described in the article was already under contract when that re-direction occurred. Best case, NASA may have had a choice between allowing the contract to continue, or canceling the contract, which would also cost money. More likely, this program was in the budget as a line item, in which case it probably requires an act of Congress (in the literal sense) to cancel the program mid-year.

Private flight will take over mundane tasks like taking humans to the International Space Station. Space X has made leaps and bounds towards this goal, and I forsee us using Commercial Access to Space by 2015. It was the best approach to this. The downside of abandoning the Space Shuttle is that we will no longer have the ability to carry large payloads from orbit back to earth. That was the only niche the Space Shuttle had that others did not. While it wouldn't be able to bring back a large payload li

I disagree. NASA hasn't bungled anything. The reason we don't have a replacement is that it takes more than 8 years and every president cancels the last guy's program. We wouldn't have made it to the moon if JFK hadn't been a hugely popular martyr. And even then, as soon as we set foot on the moon, they canceled Apollo. And every president since has canceled the last guy's program - except Carter. Carter, being a one-term president tried but failed to cancel the shuttle and that's the only reason we ever had it.

It doesn't take 8 years, just ask Elon Musk.
It takes more than 8 years if a part of the project (the biggest?) is keeping people in jobs and lawmakers demanding stupid, really expensive, unsafe stuff included in the design (read shuttle derived).

If you launch from 20 miles up - basically to the point where there aerodynamics starts to become irrelevant, how much could you then save on the size of rocket/amount of fuel needed to reach orbit - or the moon? Clearly not a new or startling idea, but any numbers on what a floating launch pad would buy you? (assuming the capability having a strong enough / lighter than-air launch pad (i.e. launch pad supported by large helium / hydrogen balloons).

Fairly significant, actually. Kistler's original launcher design was an 'SSTO' which would have launched from a platform lifted to around 100,000 feet; they reckoned that made the difference between viable and non-viable for that design.

There are two main benefits: you don't have to worry about aerodynamic drag, and you can use engines optimised for vacuum operation which are more efficient than engines optimised for sea-level operation.

Speaking in terms of gravity, you dont gain much. But you are putting the vast majority of the atmosphere below you. This makes, for example, hydrogen engines more efficient for 1st stages (they need huge tanks for the light nitrogen, which create tons of drag in the lower atmosphere.)

You mean like the harsh complete lack of environment in "deep space"? Acoustical and vibration testing for riding around in a hard vacuum, surrounded by nothing? Are they worried that the astronauts are going to put on smash rock at 120 decibels with overdriven bass and accidentally shake the capsule apart?

Some copy writer for the press has been watching too much Star Wars.

Or maybe, just maybe, the vibration testing is for doing things in near space, like flying through the atmosphere while landing.

The project was critically underfunded. Bush was funding it for appearances knowing he was leaving a problem for whoever took over after him. The net effect of the Obama administration is actually a slight rise in NASA's overall budget. It's a shame to see publicly funded manned space missions fall by the wayside though.

This is exactly why China will ultimately surpass us (USA) in space exploration. Unlike us, they don't have a flawed system where the entire direction of their national space policy changes on one man's whim every 4 years. In fact, the Europeans will probably also surpass us, because they too do not have flawed systems where one man has most of the power of the nation at his command, and can basically make any decision he wants with near-dictatorial powers (it's called "signing statements").

A simple capsule that carries little in the way of extra weight is much more elegant in my mind. Those wings may look nice, but they are heavy and cause trouble.

And who's decided it isn't worth or time? I'm pretty sure NASA's budget is still strong despite the hatchet men in congress, exciting things are happening on many fronts, and we've got *multiple* manned vehicles currently in development and likely to see flight within 5 years. This is an exciting time for space exploration.

President Obama never said space isn't worth out time (your generalization has to hit something), but at $500m per launch, the aging shuttle fleet wasn't cost effective. It never achieved the goal of becoming our affordable pick-up truck to space. Bush's replacement solution for the shuttle was to build the biggest rocket ever, and Texas sized boondoggle that was beset by engineering problems. It was already over-budget and behind schedule.
In order to provide more money for proven exploratory solutions

Excuse me... would you mind telling me where the "dig" is at the President?

The only passage I see that references our President is "Orion and the companion Ares heavy-lift rocket were part of Constellation, a program cancelled under President Barack Obama's 2011 budget proposal."

That is a statement of fact. It is in no way biased, skewed or twisted. It's just about as plain a statement as one can make.

But I guess it must be hard to notice these details when you've got to read over such a highly-held nose.

About freaking time. Moon is perfect as the first shipyard for interplanetary craft: shallow gravity well, no atmosphere, abundant solar energy, abundant water, close to Earth, natural radiation shelters with near-constant temperature (lava [melikamp.com] tubes [slashdot.org]). Imagine also an optical telescope in a crater near the pole. Astronomy geeks would fight in an octagon to get some time on that, even without any radiation shielding.

Excuse me... would you mind telling me where the "dig" is at the President?

The only passage I see that references our President is "Orion and the companion Ares heavy-lift rocket were part of Constellation, a program cancelled under President Barack Obama's 2011 budget proposal."

That is a statement of fact. It is in no way biased, skewed or twisted. It's just about as plain a statement as one can make.

But I guess it must be hard to notice these details when you've got to read over such a highly-held nose.

Um, you do realize that selective statement of fact is one of the best ways to manipulate people, right? But given your reaction maybe you don't.

The story could have also said that "President Obama chose to replace the Constellation program with one focused on fostering the development of the technology for accessing Low Earth Orbit in the private sector." But of course that would insinuate that our "Socialist" President actually believes in the ability of the private sector to innovate rather than handin

I bet you're the type of person who if I were to tell to "Have a nice day", you could "read between the lines" that I actually said that I hope your everyone in your immediate family gets AIDS and that you should go skydive naked into a field full of cacti.

There's a difference between "reading between the lines" and "making shit up to justify [your] viewpoint".

I bet you're the type of person who if I were to tell to "Have a nice day", you could "read between the lines" that I actually said that I hope your everyone in your immediate family gets AIDS and that you should go skydive naked into a field full of cacti.

There's a difference between "reading between the lines" and "making shit up to justify [your] viewpoint".

Aw, how cute. So naive. From a "news" network whose executives provide political talking points to all of their news reporters? I don't think I'm making anything up. Have a nice day, Sunshine.

The only passage I see that references our President is "Orion and the companion Ares heavy-lift rocket were part of Constellation, a program cancelled under President Barack Obama's 2011 budget proposal."